FAQS

Supporting the Dedoose user is critical to our mission—satisfied users who are getting the best out of Dedoose. We are listening carefully and working to provide easy access to the help that users need. Outside the User Guide, this FAQs section provides quick access to answers to those issues we hear most about.

This is a simple cell formatting issue. Highlight the column with data that aren't displaying properly and format the cells as 'General' by: (a) clicking the right mouse button, choose 'Format Cells,' and click 'General' under the 'Number' tab or (b) open the 'Cells' menu on the main menu bar, click 'Format Cells,' and click 'General' under the 'Number' tab.

There are no functional differences in Dedoose between tags and codes and these terms can be used interchangeably to refer to the 'labels' that make up the code system to represent the themes or concepts that will be used to organize the qualitative data and communicate research findings.

Click the Memo tab in the Main Menu Bar.

Click on the memo you want to inspect to open it.

Click the ‘Memo Links’ button.

You will now see a list of the items linked to a memo.

Users that have access to 2 or more projects will see the 'Projects' button on the main menu bar. Dedoose will always load the most recent project you had accessed, so click that button to select a different project than the one you most recently accessed.

Yes, updating descriptor fields and data involves four steps: 1) adding the new descriptor fields, 2) exporting the existing descriptor data, 3) adding the new records and data to the database (you will see that Dedoose has added a new column called DedooseID for existing records to assure the data will remain linked to any associated resources), and 4) re-importing the descriptors to the project.

While very generous, limits have been set on different aspects of a Dedoose project to protect the client-side system performance Dedoose servers can handle endless amounts of data, but contemporary local computer resources do present some limitations. The maximum limits for aspects of a Dedoose project are descriptor field sets = 10/project, descriptor fields = 50/set, descriptors = 5000/project, and resources = 5000/project.

Absolutely, part of Dedoose's flexibility is how different approaches to mixed methods work are accommodated to allow any modification to a code system and/or tag definition at anytime during the course of a project.

Dynamic descriptor fields are an advanced type of option list field available in Dedoose. Typically used very sparingly, dynamic descriptors let you see and explore change over time when you collect qualitative data at multiple time points as their values are determined when a descriptor is linked to a resource. To illustrate when a dynamic descriptor might be used, imagine you are doing an 18-month study on elementary school student reading skills and will interview the students three times. Some of the descriptor data for each participant will be the same at all time-points, but some will change—for example, student gender, ethnicity, and family SES group might stay the same over the course of the project, but the time of measurement (e.g., baseline, time 1, time 2) or classroom grade (e.g., 3rd, 4th, 5th) might change. If you make time of measurement or class grade dynamic descriptors you will be prompted to set the value (e.g., baseline, time 1, time 2) when linking the qualitative resource to a descriptor. Subsequently, your excerpting and tagging activity for those qualitative resources will be linked to the specific time point. With data like these, Dedoose allows you to explore change over the three time-points and there is a set of graphs built into Dedoose to facilitate exposing patterns of change and drilling into the meaning of the patterns that emerge.

A number of predefined user groups are available to project administrators so they can control levels of access to the project database. To use them, the administrator first selects the groups required for the project depending on what kinds of privileges and restrictions they wish to establish. Then each user can be moved into the group appropriate for their role.

In the Link Existing Item bar type the title of a code, media file, excerpt, or descriptor.

Click on what you want to link the memo to from the list that appears.

The item will then appear in the list of linked items.

Click Save.

To link a memo from a code:

Go to your code tree. This can be done from wherever you can see the code tree, including the Home Dashboard and when viewing a media file.

Click the ‘Edit Codes’ button.

Float your mouse over the code you want to link a memo to and click the ‘Linked Memos’ button that appears.

Select Create New Memo to create a memo that will automatically link to the code.

To link an existing memo, click ‘Link Existing Memos’ option at the top.

Click the memo search bar to see a list of your memos appear. You can also type in text to search for a specific memo.

Click on the title of a memo you want to link.Your memo will be linked and will show up in the list of linked memos.

To view the text of any linked memos, click on their title in the list under Title.

To link a memo from a media file:

Click the Media tab in the Main Menu Bar.

Find the media file you want to link a memo to and click the button in the Memos field for that file.

If you would like to link a memo from a view of a document, open it and click the ‘Memos’ button on the top right.

Select Create New Memo to create a memo that will automatically link to the media file.

To link an existing memo, click ‘Link Existing Memos’ option at the top.

Click the memo search bar to see a list of your memos appear. You can also type in text to search for a specific memo.

Click on the title of a memo you want to link. Your memo will be linked and will show up in the list of linked memos.

To view the text of any linked memos, click on their title in the list under Title.

To link a memo to an excerpt:

Click the Excerpt tab in the Main Menu bar.

Find the excerpt you want to link a memo to and click the button in the Memos field for that excerpt.

If you would like to link a memo while having a view of the content of the excerpt, click on the excerpt from the list and then click ‘Memos’ on the bottom of the window that appears.

Select Create New Memo to create a memo that will automatically link to the excerpt.

To link an existing memo, click ‘Link Existing Memos’ option at the top.

Click the memo search bar to see a list of your memos appear. You can also type in text to search for a specific memo.

Click on the title of a memo you want to link. Your memo will be linked and will show up in the list of linked memos.

To view the text of any linked memos, click on their title in the list under Title.

To link a memo to a descriptor:

Click the Descriptors tab in the Main Menu Bar.

Find the descriptor you want to link a memo to and click the button in the Memos field for that descriptor.

Select Create New Memo to create a memo that will automatically link to the descriptor.

To link an existing memo, click ‘Link Existing Memos’ option at the top.

Click the memo search bar to see a list of your memos appear. You can also type in text to search for a specific memo.

Click on the title of a memo you want to link. Your memo will be linked and will show up in the list of linked memos.

To view any linked memos, click on their title in the list under Title.

You can import text, audio, and video files into Dedoose. Here are the different formats accepted. If your files have a different format that is not currently supported, converting them to a supported format will allow for import.

Supported spreadsheet formats include: .xls, .xlsx, and .csv. These can all be directly imported to the Descriptor Workspace and code tree depending on your needs.

Supported audio file formats include: .mp3, .wav, m4a, and .wma.

Supported video file formats are currently limited to .mp4.

Adobe Flash, which makes Dedoose such a cool and dynamic tool, uses a lot of cache system memory. As you work, some of this memory gets used to store previously viewed information. First just try a reload and if the interaction is still sluggish you should try a cache clear. To reload:

For PC users: click into the browser address bar and click the F5 key on your keyboard.

When viewing a document, there is an ‘Edit Media’ icon in the header (it looks like a cog or snowflake). Click this button to open an 'Edit Document' panel. Here you can modify the document title or description and click 'Submit' to save. Or, you can delete the document by clicking the 'Delete Document' button in the lower left corner of the panel.

Yes, Dedoose can handle virtually any language and character set.

Multiple descriptor sets are designed for studies using multiple levels of analysis. For example, if a study is comparing the success of different school districts, there might be three levels of data: 1) the district, 2) the schools within a district, and 3) the students within a school. It is likely that different sets of descriptor variables would be collected at each level, i.e., district level variables (e.g., average family annual income, square miles of capture area, percent rural versus urban neighborhoods), school level variables (e.g., size of student population, student-teacher ratio, percent of children on free lunch program), and student level variables (e.g., age, gender, size of family, language spoken at home, standardized test scores). If the study involves interviews with parents about the home environment, each interview could be linked to three descriptors: the one specific to their child, their child's school, and their school district. Dedoose allows exploration of qualitative data and tagging activity across descriptors. Thus, in a study like this, variation in the qualitative data could be explored as a function of district, school, or student variables or any combination of them.

Follow these instructions to reset your password. Make sure that you have access to the email account linked to your Dedoose account. If you do not, please contact our support team at support@dedoose.com for help resetting the password.

Click the 'Forgot Password' button on the bottom of the Log In page.

Enter either your Dedoose username or email address. Hit Submit.

If you enter your email address, make sure that it is the one linked to your Dedoose account. If not, the system will not register that you have an account. You will then receive an email with a new randomly generated password to log in with.

Yes. When importing descriptors to Dedoose, a validation check review screen is presented before you can submit the data to the system. If data are missing, there will be a warning in the error section that identifies any missing data as 'Not a valid option.' Regardless of any errors, the data can still be imported by clicking 'Submit.'

The maximum number of levels in a tag/code tree is limited to five.

Click the Memos tab in the Main Menu Bar.

Click the check box on the top right of any memos you want to export.

Click the box next to any memo groups you want to export.

Click the ‘Export’ button that appears.

Select the export format you want your memos in.

If you want to import your memos into another project, export into XML.

Check any information you would like included in your export.

Click ‘Submit’.

Confirm your download.

A number of predefined user groups are available to project administrators so they can control levels of access to the project database. To use them, the administrator first selects access groups with the privileges and restrictions they wish to establish. Once those are created, each user can be moved into the group appropriate for their role.

The pre-defined access list settings have been found to meet virtually all the needs of Dedoose users. However, if your project presents a unique situation, please feel free to contact Dedoose support and we will do all we can to address your needs.

Yes, and this can be a great way to link activities within Dedoose to resources located outside the Dedoose project.

When data have been filtered, you can easily save the filtered data set for future use or turn off the filter. In the Data Set Workspace, click the 'Data set' tab and click 'Save Current Set,’ and provide a nice title and description. And, to clear the filter, close Dedoose or click the ‘Clear Current Set' in that same ‘Data set’ tab.

There are basically three ways to add users to a Dedoose project depending on whether the user already has an account. All additions take place in the Project Security Center and must be carried out by a user with administrative privileges. When attempting to add a user, the system will prompt you for an email address.

If the email address is already associated with a Dedoose account holder, you will have the option to invite them to be linked to your project. Select a group, send the invite and, if they accept (they will get an email invitation), they are in and ready to go.

If the email is not found to be associated with a Dedoose account holder, you will have the option to create (and pay for) an account for the new user, or invite the individual to create their own Dedoose account and then be linked to your project.

Text in Dedoose is presented via the Adobe platform. While this is a very powerful and flexible platform, it requires a 're-drawing' when changes are made. When using the up/down arrows to scroll, the updated location in the document will not be presented until the button is released upon release, the document is presented in the new location. To avoid any confusion about location in the document, the scroll bar can be dragged to a new position or the scroll wheel on a mouse can be used both of these approaches utilize a real-time dynamic presentation of the document view.

Yes. The Desktop App is a copy of the web application that is able to run outside the web browser to enhance the user experience. This means you still need an internet connection to connect to your project data. We are working on an offline version and will shout loud and clear when it is released…stay tuned.

No, this is simply a function of the tree being redrawn upon applying a check mark and does not affect functionality.

Here is how to cite Dedoose in any manuscript, proposal, report, presentation…or anywhere else it is appropriate to cite the tools you’ve used:

Please make sure that you use the most updated version and year. The version number is noted in the URL when you log into Dedoose and use the year for which you have needed the citation.

Finally, we would love to receive a copy of anything you get published with a Dedoose citation so we can highlight your work on our website or other social media.

Click the Memos tab in the Main Menu Bar.

To edit a memo title or text:

Click a memo to open it.

Click in the title section to edit the memo title.

Click in the content area to edit the memo text.

Once you have made the changes, click ‘Save’ and exit the memo.

To edit a memo group name:

Go to the Memo Groups section.

Click the ‘Edit’ button next to a memo group.

Edit the group title.

Click ‘Save’ when you are done.

A qualified ‘yes’ on this one. In the edit document view, you will find an option to ‘unlock’ the file for editing. HOWEVER, the indexing that takes place as excerpts are created and tagged is very complicated, so you must agree to a warning that states all excerpts, codes, and memos in the document will be deleted before you can edit the file. The programming to allow document editing without a need to delete anything is huge, so it is a ‘coming soon’ item on our development roadmap.

The only ‘Save’ button in Dedoose is when syncing transcript sections to excerpts on video and audio streams or when editing a text file. All other data submitted to a Dedoose project are automatically saved in real-time so you never have to worry about losing data because you forgot to click 'Save.' Logging out of Dedoose is as simply as clicking the logout button in the Dedoose header or just closing your browser window.

Changing your password in Dedoose is simple and quick. Just follow the steps below. If you forget your password, or are getting an error when trying to log in that your password is incorrect, you will want to reset it. Here are steps on how to reset your password.

Go to the Accounts Workspace

Click 'Change Password' under User Information

Type in the old password and the new password twice. Then hit 'Submit'.

Keep in mind, your password must be at least 7 characters long. You can use letters, characters, or symbols.

Click the Memos tab in the Main Menu Bar.

Click ‘Create New’ button on the top right.

In the Memo Groups section, type in the name of an existing group or type a new name to create a new group.

Enter a title for the memo.

Type in the content for the memo.

Click ‘Save’ on the bottom right of the memo.

Exit the memo.

This is one of the few places in Dedoose that you do need to save. Don’t forget!

These are two approaches that Dedoose employs to help you quickly see where excerpting activity has taken place and what codes have been applied. Both are visual cues as to what you have already excerpted as you browse your resources. Floating over the bracket brings up a smart tip on information about the excerpt creator, date of creation, and any codes applied. And a click on the bracket will take you into excerpt editing mode for that particular excerpt and allow for additional coding, the removal of previously applied codes, or deleting the entire excerpt.